To increase the productivity and/or quality of a manufacturing apparatus, various data of the manufacturing apparatus may be collected and analyzed. For example, the final quality, the inspection results, etc., of the product are compared with the data recited above. Improvement opportunities may be identified by tracking the data of products for which poor results are obtained. For such a purpose, a method may be employed in which the ID of the workpiece is read at a timing before and after processing and is associated with process data. However, such a method cannot be employed in the case where the ID does not accompany the workpiece itself or in the case where it is difficult to read the ID at the timing before and after the processing.
It also may be considered to alter the control software of the manufacturing apparatus to perform the data collection while making associations with the workpiece. However, the cost of altering software is large. Further, in such a case, it is necessary to alter the software for each manufacturing apparatus.